Chapter 1 #2
Sam knows all too well, especially after this last month, that by “doornail,” Joey means it’s as dead as one in there.
He sighs hard, collapsing back a little against the brickwork.
It’s noon on a Friday. This should be prime time, lunch rush.
Alphonse should be sweating and swearing and begging Eileen to jump in and assist whoever was supposed to be slicing the meat; Joey should be howling for help as they’re mobbed by a horde of irascible zombies who can only be sated by corned beef.
Sam himself should, right now, be experiencing the strangely blissful stress of being pulled in a dozen directions at once, with no time or energy to even consider his own problems.
Instead, in direct violation of his own intention from only moments ago, he mutters, “That stupid review, I swear to God. Did you know this could happen? That some jackass critic could just write up a hit piece based on basically nothing and kill your traffic like this?”
Alphonse winces. “I mean… yeah, man. I’ve never seen anything go quite as, uh, wide as this has, but crappy Yelp reviews killed the last two places I worked at.”
Sam freezes, briefly stunned into loaded, unpleasant silence.
Silverman’s can’t die. Individual Silvermans, of course, could die, and did all the time.
The deli’s history is pockmarked with loss, like any place that’s handed down through a family.
But Silverman’s, the location, the institution, has loomed so large across Sam’s life as to become something unkillable, beyond such petty concerns as mortality.
It’s like suggesting a mountain could die, or a continent.
The very idea rocks Sam’s internal landscape to a degree he’s a little embarrassed by.
“Let’s try not to get ahead of ourselves,” he says instead. “Maybe it’s just an… unrelated slump. It wasn’t this bad last month after the review came out, right?”
Alphonse winces; Sam knows why. While it’s true that traffic had taken a few weeks to start dropping, it’s hard to agree with the idea that last month wasn’t bad.
It was differently bad, that was all. So many regulars coming in to say they were sorry to hear the deli was closing, and then looking at Sam with pity when he insisted it was not, would be hard for anyone to describe as “good.”
With forced brightness, Sam says, “Okay, last month sucked, too, but it’s just a couple of quiet weeks, and it’s probably the weather anyway.
People are easily convinced to stay inside by this point in the winter, you know that.
But it’ll turn around, you’ll see! It might not be from the review at all, and even if it is, just because the stupid column is called Kiss of Death doesn’t mean it actually is one. ”
“Yeah,” Alphonse says doubtfully, “maybe not,” but Sam can tell his heart isn’t in it.
Sam goes inside, because it’s high time he walked away from this conversation, and cloisters himself in his office.
Well, it’s not really his office, not technically.
Like the deli, like the apartment above it, this is really Deb’s office.
They’re her books on the shelves, and her files in the cabinet, and her framed photo of Talya, her wife, on the desk.
It’s her name on the door, even, although about six months ago Alphonse did stick up a Post-it below that reads, + Sam Adelson!
Every time Sam looks at it, it embarrassingly makes him feel a little burst of… well, of something, anyway. Not entirely pride, certainly, since it’s a Post-it note, but something.
But if he wants more than the Post-it—if he wants his name to really be on the glass windowpane of this office door—he’s going to have to do more than sit here and woolgather.
That’s the deal he made with his aunt, who, understandably, had some hesitations about handing over the reins of the family establishment to her then freshly twenty-nine-year-old nephew, the one she originally took in as a troubled teen.
This whole last year has been an audition of sorts, and while it’s just Sam’s luck that something would go haywire in the last few months before she’s due back to town, he can’t let it all slip away from him now.
He wakes up his computer—Deb’s computer—abruptly flush with noble intentions of getting a jump on next week’s payroll documentation.
He finds himself, instead, pulling up the stupid horrible life-ruining Kiss of Death review, a moth to a raging inferno.
He’s read it so many times, first in shock and then in horror and then in rage, that he more or less knows it by heart.
Still, he skims over it now, his eyes lingering briefly on choice phrases as he scrolls.
“Like eating a mouthful of fishy cement” whizzes past, followed shortly by “Couldn’t have been more poorly seasoned if they were trying” and “If this place ever had the juice in the first place, you can rest assured it is long, long gone.”
He stops scrolling when he gets to the bottom, his gaze settling, as it always does, on the little italicized paragraph after the article’s close.
It sits next to a thumbnailed headshot of a round-faced white man in his mid-fifties—a larger copy of which is currently pinned to the dartboard in the break room—and reads, “Norman Endicott is a restaurant critic and reviewer based on the West Coast. To protect his safety, his inbox, and the integrity of the review process, we do not share his contact information publicly. Please direct any questions, concerns, complaints, or tips to help@, subject line ‘Kiss of Death.’” This, above all else, irks Sam.
The integrity of the review process, fine, whatever.
But Endicott’s safety and privacy? Sam wants to talk, that’s all.
Just talk. Nice, normal talking, at a reasonable volume, with absolutely no throwing of pickled herring, or hosing him down with a squirt gun loaded with expired clam juice.
God, maybe the Hearth policy has a point.
Sobered by this thought, Sam decides it’s best to step away from the computer, and technology at large.
What the situation calls for is Sam being visible, and friendly, and waving to passing customers who might be on the fence about stopping in.
There’s a large photo of his grandparents right across from the door: his grandmother, who started the place, is sitting on his grandfather’s lap just in front of the register, obviously laughing.
Sam inherited her sharp cheekbones and aquiline nose, not to mention his grandfather’s athletic build and dark, unruly hair; any time he stands in front of the photo, someone passing comments on the resemblance.
So that’s Sam’s best move right now: being present. Generally reminding everyone that this is a family place, one that has been here for generations, and they don’t need to take their advice from some snotty douchebag on the internet who’s proven he can’t be trusted.
As if to punctuate this thought, the bell on the front door goes off. From the direction of the walk-in, he hears Joey yell, “Can someone grab that? I’m halfway through refilling the mac salad,” and Sam jumps up, energized.
“I got it,” he calls back, already hurrying towards the front.
He’s glancing around as he walks towards the counter, mostly trying to make sure he doesn’t bump into anyone who might also have answered Joey’s summons, so he only takes in the vague shape of someone standing in front of the register.
He starts talking as he approaches, the patter so familiar as to be second nature: “Hi there, welcome to Silverman’s! What can I get for—”
“Jesus Christ.” The voice is shocked and so obviously strained that it pulls Sam’s focus back to center at once. His gaze wrenches forward to the waiting customer and…
… freezes, just like the rest of him, as he realizes exactly who he’s looking at.
Jake Thompson, of all people, is staring back at him from the other side of the counter.